Libya’s Front Lines

For several hours Wednesday, after days suspended in an ill-defined political limbo, eastern Libya’s “liberated” territory acquired a western front line in an actual shooting war. Ever since an air strike on Monday on an arms depot west of Benghazi, the capital of “Free Libya,” tensions had been ratcheting up. This morning, word came that a large armed convoy of pro-Qaddafi militiamen had invaded the oil town of Brega, a hundred and fifty miles southwest of the city. The word was that they had come from Sirt, Qaddafi’s hometown and the main government bastion between here and Tripoli.

I drove out toward Brega with a few companions. We headed west across a desert landscape, its monotony relieved only by a few sheepherders with their flocks, electrical lines, and, at one point, a dismally vast, utilitarian “new Benghazi” development being built on the plain by the Chinese—a soulless grid of hundreds upon hundreds of unfinished gray cement apartment buildings. In Ajdabiya, a benighted whistlestop an hour or so down the road, we found activity around the hospital. A group of doctors and volunteers milled around excitedly, and everyone yelled at once. There was fighting in Brega, they said; they were sending ambulances. The ambulances roared off, and we followed.

On the outskirts of Ajdabiya, there was a scene of high theatre at the double green arch, covered with sayings from Qaddafi’s “Green Book,” that marked the exit from the town. Hundreds of cars and pickups had pulled up, and on either side of the road people were manning—and trying to learn how to use—anti-aircraft batteries, urged on by a throng of men and boys wielding machetes, butcher knifes, Kalashnikovs, and revolvers, chanting, cheering, and shouting, “God is great.” More and more volunteer fighters began arriving, racing at high speed to join the crowd at the gates, waving their weapons. Sometimes the crowd threw water on them, apparently a Libyan benediction.

Colleagues of mine of many nationalities—American, Russian, Egyptian, Belgian, French, and Italian—were taking notes and snapping pictures amid the chaos. Every so often, a gun would go off, and a great roar of approval went up when, at last, one of the novice crews of the anti-aircraft batteries opened up and fired off a terrifyingly loud and exultant sustained burst into the sky. A huge bang on the other side of the road sent dozens of men running. Was it incoming? No. Someone had misfired a big gun and wounded himself.

After a time, groups of fighters roared off toward Brega, and we followed them. Another hour, and off the road appeared Brega, an everything-the-same-salmon-colored oil town with some residential housing and a university, where the fighting was taking place. We could hear it now—great booms and thuds that sounded like mortars—and there were gray smoke bursts, too, off in the distance. The desert hereabouts was hillocky, with bushes like sagebrush dotted around.

We followed some friends who were ahead down a road that ran along the seaside—beautiful snorkeling waters there—and found ourselves at a kind of impromptu front line. Hundreds of fighters were running around with guns and R.P.G.s and hand grenades; climbing the sand-dunes just off the road to look upon, and fire upon, the university, where Qaddafi’s people were said to be; and roaring up and back along the corniche in jeeps, cars, and technical pickups mounted with heavy machine guns. Whenever fighters appeared, people chanted slogans and waved the “V” sign. A pickup roared past us toward the town, with several dead men in the back. A couple of jets—Mirages or MiGs, I couldn’t tell—appeared overhead and did some passes, bombing once, just over the dunes. A friend who started to follow some fighters to the dune-top came back after a minute, saying that the jets had rocketed very close to where they were walking.

A large pan of rice and chicken was brought out, and offered around, followed by small glasses of hot, sweet tea; the men squatted down next to a technical vehicle in the road under the blazing sun to have their lunch.

At the very front, where a couple of cars had been shot up and no one had driven farther, a large number of anti-aircraft shells littered the road. A man picked one up, came to our car, and said, “We’re going to shove this up Qaddafi’s ass.” He gave us a thumbs-up sign.

After a time, a kind of flatness came into the atmosphere; there was still the thump-thumping of heavy machine gun fire, but it was sporadic, and most of the fighters had gotten into their vehicles and raced back toward town. They said that the fighting had moved down that way, closer to the university itself, where the Qaddafi militiamen had made ready for their attack earlier that day. We followed them and eventually found the university, which was quiet. The militiamen had gone—after their day of mayhem they had given up and gone back to Sirt in their convoy, he said. The fighters who had pursued them ahead of us had vanished, too. We drove off looking for them.

We stopped by the sea, where I picked up an ammo box—it had printed on it various numbers and “D.P.R. of Korea”—and then drove back out toward the main road. A large number of men had gathered under a large Qaddafi billboard and, in a festive scene similar to the one outside Ajdabiya, were shooting their guns in the air and chanting for victory. Several were ripping pieces off the canvas billboard, on which a part of Qaddafi’s face was still visible.

Volunteers moved through the crowd, offering cartons of juice and loaves of bread, when all of a sudden a fighter jet screamed overhead and dropped a bomb. It landed just beyond the parked cars, about fifty or sixty feet away, and sent up a huge cloud of smoke and glass and dirt. Everyone ran; I watched the bomb explode. Incredibly, no one was hurt; then, everyone, horrified, ran to their vehicles and began tearing off—back to Brega, Ajdabiya, Benghazi. Our car’s windshield had a new spiderwebbing of cracks, but my companions and I were unscathed. (Later, back in Benghazi, we heard booms in the distance, which made all the dogs bark.)

At the last moment, amid the chaos and the smoke, a few men rallied and began chanting triumphantly again, but the jet’s message, or near-miss—whatever it had been—had had its effect. I overheard someone say, “Fuck you, Qaddafi. Now we’re going to get a no-fly zone.”